Well, amen. You may take your seats.
It’s a privilege to be with you again tonight and to have an opportunity to uh hopefully just see the Lord put an exclamation point on what he’s already done, just seal his work in our hearts.
And so my goal tonight is not necessarily to share anything new.
It’s just to ask the Lord to put a great big old fat exclamation point on what it is that he has already been doing in your heart before we do that.
I want you to know what a privilege it is.
I know, I say this on behalf of uh Laura and Doctor Caroline and Wendy that it is a privilege for us.
It is a, an honor that the Lord would allow us the joy of serving you in ministry.
It is our joy to do that.
We’re grateful that you would have us and this house in particular uh you, you need to know that every church ain’t got it this good.
You need to know that, that to have leaders that have such integrity and character, that the same people that you see up on the platform that they’re the exact same way when they’re not on the platform, y’all, that is a rare precious thing that you ought to celebrate.
And so I thought tonight you would want to with me honor and celebrate the leaders of this house, Marie and pastor Paul Dion.
I know we bless you in Jesus name.
Thank you so much for this wonderful feast, Lord Jesus, we are privileged to be in your presence.
We thank you Lord, that every single time we open up the word we should, we can expect to hear a fresh word from you.
Thank you Lord, that it never runs dry, that it never runs out of insight and inspiration and conviction and challenge and instruction.
Lord, we are so grateful that every single time we open up this book, we feel the warm breath of God brushing across our cheeks as you speak a now word into our lives.
Lord, tonight we are sitting on the edge of our seat because we cannot wait to hear what the spirit will say to the church.
Lord, I pray that in these few moments, you would do what only you can?
Would you please take this one simple message?
Would you divide it 1300 different ways so that every single one of us hears not my voice but the voice of God.
In Jesus name. Amen. I have three siblings. I have an older sister.
She actually is my next door neighbor.
We have Children that are basically the exact same age as she has two older daughters.
But then both of us have three boys and you would have thought we planted because we just kept getting pregnant at the same time and they were boys.
So we’ve got six boys that run back and forth to each other’s houses pretty much all day long.
And so my older sister and I are very close friends. We’re also very close with our two brothers.
I have a younger brother named Anthony Junior and then my youngest brother is Jonathan.
We call the baby John John.
He’s really, he is the baby, but he really isn’t the baby because he’s, you know, my baby brother John John and my brothers both do what I guess adult brothers do every time they come over my house, they immediately go to the refrigerator and the pantry to forge around and just find out what there might be to eat left over in our house.
And so that is what my brother John John was doing the other day.
He came over, he went directly to the refrigerator and he was just kind of moving things out of the way, looking for something to snack on, out of the refrigerator.
And I guess while he was standing in front of the refrigerator, he was reminded of something that he wanted to share with me.
And so right there in the kitchen, he started telling me a little story about his daughter who is my niece.
She’s one of the only little girls in our family. We got lots of boys and Kelsey is her name.
Kelsey is four years old now.
But as he told me this story, he said, Priscilla, when Kelsey was two, did I ever tell you about this habit that she had when she was two?
She would walk over to the refrigerator any time she was hungry, she would point at the big box in the kitchen that had the food in it and she would say eat.
So he said, what I would do is go and pick up my little girl who was obviously hungry.
I would take her over to the booster seat that was, that would be attached to the little chair there at the kitchen table.
I would put her in the booster seat though so that I could feed her.
But now in her little two year old mind, she was just far removed from the big box in the kitchen that had the food in it.
So she would commence to cry. A river of tears. She would have tears rolling down her cheek.
They would, she would throw a little temper tantrum.
She would wiggle her way out of the chair, stomp her feet back across the kitchen floor.
Go back to the big box in the kitchen that had the food in it, point at it and say eat.
So he said I would then pick her up.
I would take her back across the kitchen to the booster seat that is attached to the chair at the kitchen table.
I would put her in it. She would commence to cry. A river of tears, throw a temper tantrum.
Stop her little feet back across the kitchen floor.
Point at the big box that had the food in it and say eat.
So he said, then I would go get her and I would pick her up and I would take her back to the booster seat, sit her in the chair, she would throw a temper tantrum and we would go through this over and over and over and over again.
And he was giggling as he told me this story.
But he said to me, Priscilla, even though I’m giggling right now, let’s just be clear.
It wasn’t funny at the time.
There was nothing funny about trying to get this girl to realize that where I was putting her was actually where she needed to be to receive what she was asking me for that.
Really? She was fighting against me when all I was trying to do was put her in the right environment so that she would be prepared to receive what it was that she was requesting.
And so there I was laughing about my little curly headed very precocious niece.
I don’t know where she got any of that from.
And I’m in the kitchen listening to John John tell me this story and I was just laughing, thinking about I could so see Kelsey acting this way and I was just laughing and laughing and right there in the middle of my laughter, the Holy Spirit stopped me in my tracks and said, Priscilla, do not laugh too long or too hard because that would be you.
Has that ever happened to you where you’re giggling about something?
And the Holy Spirit sets conviction on you there.
I was in the kitchen thinking about them many times that the Lord has tried to put me in the right environment around the right people in the right relationships in the right ministry opportunity or away from any of those things.
And I fight against him or ignore his plans or walk in the opposite direction or act like I didn’t hear what it was.
I know the Holy Spirit and the word of God was saying to me how many times I’ve been Kelsey, you’ve been Kelsey when we fought against God, but graciously lovingly caring, generously, he constantly keeps on bringing us back time and time and time again.
So right there in the kitchen, I became overwhelmingly grateful for the patience of God, the long suffering nature of our God.
So for just a few moments tonight, I want to remind you about one of the characteristics of God that is often the least talked about.
It is the least discussed. I honestly couldn’t find a whole lot of material just written about this very basic principle about the character of God that He is patient with us.
Anybody other than me glad about that, that He is slow to anger.
Thank you Lord and great in mercy.
The reason why it is so critical for you and I to get a revelation of the patience of God is because it really can change your life.
When you do, the enemy would have it that you and I are so concerned and worried that God might have just had enough of us and our foolishness and our mistakes that, that we end up walking gingerly in our relationship with God.
We end up tip toeing around him because we’re worried and concerned that he might put us up on the shelf that He might not use us anymore.
That if we say one more Wrong thing or make one more mistake or move in the wrong direction that God just might be through with us.
But when you have a revelation of the grace and the mercy and the patience of God, it doesn’t cause you to really want to take advantage of it.
It causes you to be so grateful for it that you want to get busy doing what John 1010 has invited us to to do live the abundant adventure that God has given to us.
It causes you to stop walking on eggshells to leave this conference and not be concerned.
And worried anymore that God has had enough of you in your past and the decisions you’ve made and the long journey you might have in front of you, or that I might have in front of me.
It causes you to remember that He has called you to abundant living and you can’t do that afraid.
You can’t live abundantly when you’re fearful that that God is not for you 100% of the time.
So for just a few moments, I want to remind you that no matter where you’ve come from, no matter after all, we’ve been fed this weekend, no matter how much further you or I have to go, no matter how many changes need to be made, no matter how much connection, more connectedness we need to have with God.
And uh how many uh changes need to take place in our relationships with our spouse or our Children or even in our own hearts.
You need to know that no matter what the journey looks like, he’s got enough patience for that.
He’s got enough patience for that patience.
When we think about it, we normally think about it in a human sense.
We think about it as a characteristic that is honed and matured in the soul of a human being.
We need to mature in it. Most of us.
I’ll be honest with you and tell you that I am not naturally a very patient person.
I kind of like to move forward as quickly as we possibly can when there’s a problem, let’s come up with a solution and get on with it already.
That’s the kind of person I am for any of you that may be like me, slightly impatient.
Can I get one witness in the house today for any of you that struggle with that?
Like I do, I want you to know that one of the main ways that the Lord will begin to mature and hone patience in us in our souls.
The way he matures that is by putting you in a position where you have to wait the way it does.
So what he does is he causes you to marry somebody. Help me, Lord.
See, let me tell you about me and my, me and my man.
This is what you need to know when we have a problem that needs a solution within the first five minutes that we’ve had the problem.
I have come up with a solution. Let’s get on with it already. Not my husband.
Mm mm He wants to pray about it. Think about it fast on it, sleep on it.
Ask wise counsel about it. Lord have mercy.
24, 48, 72 hours later, he’s still meditating on it most of the time.
Can I just tell you that by the time he does come up with a solution most of the time it is the exact same solution I had in the first five minutes, we had a problem.
Honestly, if I’m to be honest with you, most of the time, my husband’s decisions really are the better decision because he is patient enough to think through the consequences all the way to the end patience in that relationship.
God hones in me, patients. The reason why you might work with that coworker.
You know, the one sitting next to you, that one that if she says one more thing to you, you gonna knock her out.
The Lord allows that dynamic because in those dynamics, you and I learn patience because patience is a characteristic that is honed by the Holy Spirit’s work in us.
It’s one of the fruit of God’s spirit is to teach us to buy his empowerment, to learn to be self disciplined and patient.
Because that is something that in our humanness and our frailty, we have to mature in.
We automatically assign those same dynamics to God.
We feel like even unknowingly subconsciously, we feel like since we struggle with patience, that God must struggle with it too.
And that since we get so fed up with that person, that toddler that asks us the same question over and over and over and over again, that God must be the exact same way.
And when we come to him over and over and over again, he must feel the same way about us that we do about that individual that we deal with in our human experience.
But listen, God is not a big version of us. He is God.
He is the only one that, that qualifies for his job. It’s not a job.
He has to apply for my friends. He qualifies as just the end of the story.
Everything that Patience was ever intended to be God already is 100% of the time. He’s not growing in it.
He doesn’t need to mature in it. He is 100% perfectly patient. In other words, you cannot wear God out.
He does not need a good nap before he can handle what’s happened in your life. Good.
When you think about the characteristics of God, all of the links in the chain that make up the character of God, his omniscience and His sovereignty and His omnipresence and all of those things, holiness and righteousness and justice.
All of those links in the chain of God’s character.
When you think of all of them and how important they are really in my estimation.
The most important of all of them is patience.
It’s that center link in the middle of all of the links in the chain of God’s glory.
The reason why I think it’s most critical is because if it were not for the patience of God, we wouldn’t exist long enough to get to the grace and the mercy and the sovereignty and the omniscient and the omnipresence.
The only reason y’all we get to experience any of that is because our God is patient with us long suffering, great, in loving kindness and mercy.
He is a bottomless pit of patience. I love what one author says.
He says, it is his patience that held our sinful hands and led us to the doorstep of his mercy so that we could enter in his patience, leads us on.
And so I want to talk to you for just a few moments about the patience of God.
If you have your Bible and you want to turn with me, or you can just read up on the screens, I just want to uh turn our attention to first Timothy where again the apostle Paul is writing and he writes this letter to a young man who is venturing out in life and ministry.
And in the very first letter that he writes to Tim, he gives him lots of advice, lots of insight, lots of things that he needs to know at the onset here of his ministry.
But of all the important things that He wants to share with him.
One of the most that comes right, most important that comes right at the very beginning of this very first letter to him is a message that that this older wiser mature man wants to share with this younger gentleman about the patience of God of all of the priorities that he wanted to share with him about, about God.
He wanted to make sure he didn’t leave out the importance of Timothy understanding how lavish and boundless and great and miraculous and generous God’s patience really is.
And so he writes that in first Timothy chapter one, verse 16, Paul says, and yet for this reason, I found mercy in order that in me as the foremost Jesus Christ might demonstrate his perfect patience.
What kind of patience is it?
What kind his perfect patience as an example for those who would believe in Him for eternal life?
Let’s start right there in my Bible.
I have his perfect patience underlined because Paul has gone out of his way to make sure that you and I understand what kind of patience our God has.
It is not great, it is not amazing.
It’s not just a pinnacle level of patience, it is perfect, which means when you go to that, Which represents the, the furthest reaches the outskirts of what represents the patience of God.
You will not find one imperfection even at its furthest reaches.
It is 100% perfect to 100% of all people, 100% of the time.
Now, he has a real sense of justice and, and wrath and righteousness that has to be satisfied. Of course.
But what I’m saying about our God is that he doesn’t have knee jerk reactions born out of frustration like we do.
There are consequences for our actions. Yes.
But, but there is not a straw that breaks the camel’s back and he’s had just enough of you and he’s gonna lay you with consequences just to satisfy some anger in himself.
He doesn’t operate like we do. Paul says his patience. It is perfect.
And Paul says, listen, just in case you’re unsure, just in case you think you’re the exception because of what you’ve done and what you’ve said and what you’ve thought and where you’ve been the road you’ve traveled down just in case you were unsure.
Paul says, would you please take a look at me because I’m a demonstration of the perfect patience of God.
Paul says, just in case you’re unclear, he says, would you just take a look at me?
Because every single time I look in the mirror, it is starting clear to me how lavish the patience of God must be.
He calls himself the foremost. He means the chief of all sinners.
He basically says, you ain’t done nothing that I have not already done. You have not been anywhere.
I have not already been your eyes, haven’t seen anything, my eyes have not seen your ears, haven’t heard anything, your hands haven’t done anything, your feet have not taken you anywhere that I have not already gone.
You have not been in a pit that is any deeper than the pit I’ve dug for myself.
And Paul says, if he had enough patience to reach down in my pit and pull me out of that pit, I promise he’s got enough patience for you as well.
Paul says, I’m a demonstration of how lavish his patience must be.
Now, you see here that Paul doesn’t give us his sin resume, he doesn’t list for us all the details of why he is the foremost, the chief of all sinners.
And you know what I gotta tell you, I’m a little bit glad that he didn’t give us all of the bullet points of all of his sins that caused him in his estimation to qualify as the chief of all sinners.
I’m glad he didn’t because if he would have given us his sin resume, we probably would have been so distracted looking at his sin resume that we forget we’ve got a sin resume of our own That we actually don’t have time to look at anybody else’s sin resume.
Because if the truth be told, we are the ones who are a demonstration of the lavish patience of God.
Because if we were to all pull out our sin resumes and read them over, we’d be in this room well into 2015 going over all that God has rescued us from.
Amen. So Paul says, I’m a demonstration of how lavishly patient God is. This.
Verse starts with um a phrase that I love when I see it in the scriptures because it lets me know exactly what I’m supposed to do when I’m studying a verse, it starts with this phrase for this reason yet for this reason, for this reason.
Uh that’s kind of like the word there.
Any time you see the word there for in scripture, you need to see what it’s there for because it is there for a reason.
And this verse starts with, for this reason, Paul is real clear with us.
He wants you to know there are some reasons that led him to this conclusion.
There is something he has already written in the first part of this chapter that is leading him to the conclusion of verse 16.
He didn’t come up with it out of thin air.
He wrote it specifically attached to some reasons he has already listed.
So I figure that for just a few minutes that we have together tonight, you and I can see what those reasons were.
What are the reasons that made Paul declare so poignantly how perfect the patience of God is.
And I figure once you and I see these reasons, we’ll see and, and discover that they are not only true of Paul that actually these exact same reasons are true of us that we really are the ones who are a demonstration of how perfect God’s patience must be.
So let’s just backtrack a few verses and find out what the reasons are.
The very first reason is found in verse 15. So we’re just going up one verse verse 15.
In first Timothy chapter one, Paul says, it’s a trustworthy statement deserving full acceptance that Christ Jesus came into the world.
Here’s the reason to save sinners.
Here’s the very first reason that Paul gives as an identifying characteristic to the perfect patience of God.
He says, let’s be clear, the reason why the, the primary reason why I know God’s patience must be perfect is that He saved me, that he saved me y’all in a Bible teaching church like this or like the one that I pray you go to.
If you’re not a member of this particular church, we hear about this salvation so much that oftentimes we can hear the fact that we are saved that Christ died on the cross for our sins.
And so we now have an opportunity to spend eternity with him after our life.
Here is over that the wages for our sins have been covered.
We hear that so frequently that sometimes it can just kind of roll off of us casually that we’ve been saved because we hear it all the time we’re saved but never in a million years.
Should the gravity of that wear off on us that there was a price to pay for your sin and for my sin, there is a wage that should be paid for what you’ve done and what I’ve done.
But somebody has, has, has paid the cost for us that you and I don’t have to pay that price.
There’s nothing casual about that, that salvation has come to us free of charge.
Paul says that’s a testament to how perfectly patient our God must be.
I want you to think about what a miracle it is that you and I exist that you were born in this day, in this age.
And this generation, do you realize particularly at this women’s conference?
Do you realize that for women on the planet, there has never been a time ever before in the history of the world where you had so many women gathering together in mass like this on a regular basis, not because they’re coming together for spa, spa treatments and nice snacks, but because they’re coming together to open up the Bible and hear a word from God that women are coming together in revival to fall on their knees and their faces before God and to offer themselves completely to him.
Never. Has there been a time in history where there have been so many Bible study resources by women for women?
Never. Has there been a time in the church of Jesus Christ where women have been unleashed in their giftings in the church of Jesus Christ?
Never has that happened before. And you and I get the privilege of living in this generation.
Listen, there is nothing that is by chance in the fact that you and I happen to exist right now.
You might have been a surprise to your parents, but our God was not in heavens.
Go in the heavens going oops, that one slipped past me.
He planned for you to live right now. It’s a miracle that you’re here.
Think about it. There are, as I mentioned earlier today, 7-plus billion people on the planet.
Think about the miracle that it would be that your great, great grandfather with the seven billion plus people on the planet would happen to find the woman that would be your great, great grandmother.
And the two of them would come together and create your grand great grandfather.
Then your great grandfather with the seven billion plus people that are on the planet.
He happened to find the woman that would be your great grandmother.
Then the two of them came together and created your grandfather and then your grandfather with the seven billion plus people that are on this planet.
He just happened to find the woman that would be your grandmother.
Then the two of them came together and created your father and then your father with the seven billion plus people that are on this planet.
He just happened to find the woman that would be your mother and the two of them came together and then this is a little graphic, but y’all can handle it.
Of all the million of sperm, the exact right one hooked up with your mother’s egg at exactly the right time to create you, my friend.
There ain’t nothing chance about that. That’s a miracle. That is a strategy. That is a divine plan.
Our God has been in the heavens, orchestrating the throes of the universe to make sure that you existed in the year 2014.
Nothing chance about that. It was deliberate. It was an intentional divine strategy.
And if you think it’s a miracle then that you were born, how much more of a miracle is it that you were born again?
There has been a strategy, a cosmic plan to make sure that if you’re in this room and your eyes have been open to the lordship of Jesus Christ that you have accepted.
You see Jesus for who he is. It’s not just a church on Sundays or a religion or a tradition.
But you have come to understand who Jesus is.
The only reason why that has happened is because the hound of heaven has been on your trail since the beginning of time.
There has been a cosmic plan that is deliberate and intentional to bring anyone that places faith in Jesus Christ to himself.
Do you know that first Corinthians chapter four verse four says that the enemy of this world is working over time to blind the eyes of unbelievers so that they cannot see Jesus for who he is.
Which is why when we evangelize, we cannot just with our mouths, tell people that Jesus is Lord.
We also have to on our knees pray that the Holy Spirit will cause their eyes to be open because no amount of words that come at them unless the Holy Spirit is working in their hearts and their minds, nothing will combat the, the, the fiery darts of the enemy that is working over time to keep them blinded to the truth of God.
Which means if you’re in this room and your heart was softened and your eyes were open and someone shared Jesus with you and you responded with a yes, it was a miracle of God and it’s been a deliberate intentional plan since the beginning of time to bring you to himself.
I want you to think about the cosmic strategy for your soul like a divine chess board.
God is on one side of the chess board, the enemy is on the other side of the chess board.
And since before time began, both, both of them have been vying and warring for your soul.
God made the very first move on the divine chess board for your soul. Do you remember in Genesis?
11? He makes the first move. He creates this cosmos, this world and he puts human beings on it.
He breathed the breath of breath of life into them.
He creates them in a perfect relationship with himself in a perfect environment so that they have opportunity to be in communion with him forever but the enemy not to be outdone.
He makes a move on the cosmic chessboard.
He slithers into the garden and he calls them to rebel against God.
So now there is disunity there is faction and fissures in the relationship between people and, and God and it seems like the enemy has won because then Cain kills Abel and murder has entered the scene.
But our God never to be outdone.
He makes another move on the cosmic chess board for your soul and for my soul.
He causes Adam and Eve to come back together and they have another baby named Seth.
And Genesis chapter four says that when Seth was born, everybody began to worship God again.
But the enemy not to be outdone, he made another move.
He called rebellion to enter into the hearts of mankind so much so that it proliferated across the entire earth and the entire earth needed to be destroyed, destroyed by a flood.
And it certainly seemed like the enemy had won this time. But, but our God never to be outdone.
He had another move and his name was Noah.
And he went to Noah and he said, no, I need you to build me a ark.
Noah said, build a what? He said, I need you to build me an ark because it’s gonna rain.
He said it’s gonna what? And Noah didn’t quite get it. But he moved out in obedience to God anyway.
And he built this arc. And as a result of one man’s obedience, mankind was preserved on this arc.
But the enemy not to be outdone, he made another move.
He caused rebellion to enter back into the hearts of mankind.
Again, it proliferated across the earth and it seemed like the enemy had won again, but our God not to be outdone.
He had another move. He went to this little pagan town and he found this guy named Abraham in a town called Earth and he plucked Abram out of, er, and he said, Abraham, I’m going to change your name.
I’m going to change the GPS coordinates your destiny. I’m going to send you to a brand new land.
I’m going to create a brand new people out of you.
They will be as numerous as the stars in the sky. They will be my people.
I will mark them with my favor, my provision, my by my promises, the banner over them will be my name.
Yahweh, I will be theirs and they will be mine. The enemy had another move.
He now caused God’s people to go down into Egypt for 400 years. They were enslaved.
And this time, it really seemed like the enemy had won, but our God never to be outdone.
He made another move and he caused this little baby to be born named Moses and Moses was raised as the prince of Egypt.
And at the exact right time, God told Moses, he said, Mo you go tell Pharaoh to let my people go And Moses went to Pharaoh and he demanded that the people would be let go.
But it took 10 miraculous plagues for Pharaoh’s heart to be softened, for him to release the people into the wilderness.
Do you remember 40 years in the wilderness and then into the promised land?
Finally, the people of God were in the presence of God in the place that God had given them.
But the enemy had another move.
He now caused God’s people to turn their backs on Yahweh, the one true God and to begin to worship idols, things got so bad that by the time you get to the end of the book of judges, the last line of the book of judges says everyone was doing what was right in their own eyes.
Kind of sounds like our planet in the year 2014, doesn’t it? It looked like the enemy hit one.
But our God never to be outdone.
He had another move and her name was Ruth and Ruth went through a lot of tragedy and a lot of drama in her life.
But by the time you get to the end of her very short book, you find that she meets this guy, her kinsman redeemer named Boz.
And she and Boaz come together and they have a baby named Obed Obed gives birth to Jessie.
Jessie gives birth to a little baby boy named David.
And with that one move, the enemy didn’t even know it.
But the checkmate was already on the way.
And at the end of the old Amen and at the end of the Old Testament.
There are 400 years of silence between the old and new God is on one side of the cosmic chessboard vying for your soul.
The enemy is on the other side of the cosmic chess board.
And there are 400 years of silence and nobody makes a move.
And all of humanity is waiting to see who’s gonna make the next move.
And then the New Testament opens and God makes a move that the enemy still to this day has never had a response for Jesus Christ enters the scene, God in the flesh.
He comes down. He pays the price for our sin once and for all the victory is won.
Paul brings up salvation in this passage about patience because He wants you to understand that if our great God had enough patience to make sure that He pursued you for the last two millennia, then don’t, you know, he’s got enough patience to handle the last six weeks of your life That if his salvation could pursue you so relentlessly for so many hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years.
If you were on the mind of God before time even began, then don’t you even doubt for a moment that the last year, the last six, the last 10, the last 15 are also covered by the grace and the mercy and the patience of God.
So Paul says, yeah, that’s the first reason how you know his patience is perfect.
It’s because he’s sage, but that’s not it. There’s another reason. Remember we’re backtracking.
The next reason is in verse 13, Paul says, even though I was formerly, somebody say formally, even though I was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor and a violent aggressor, yet I was shown mercy yet I was shown mercy.
This verse is great. Paul gives us a little bit of that resume.
Remember at first he just said, I’m the chief of all sinners. You don’t need any details.
Now he comes along in this verse and he says, well, I’ll give you a few, I’ll give you a handful of details.
He says I was a persecutor of the church. I was a blasphemer. I was a violent aggressor.
So he gives us a few bullet points on his sin resume.
But he wants to make sure there is a label, a heading, a title at the top of his sin resume.
That is in bold font, all caps to make sure that you don’t miss the title at the top of his sin resume.
And the title, the heading of his resume is formerly he wants you to know that yes, these things are who I used to be, but they are not who I am anymore.
The proof of His patience, the proof of the patience of God, he says is not only in that he saved me, it’s that he changed me.
God is patient, his patience in your life.
Is and in mind is seen and not only that he gives us salvation, that he justifies us, that we don’t pay the wages for our sin.
But his patience is seen that he also walks with us and sticks with us while we go through the process of being molded into the image of Christ Jesus.
This is good news for somebody today because you might be sitting here in this room and you feel a little bit of.
Can you hear me?
Yes, it’s good news. This, this idea that God sticks with us and he’s patient enough to be with us while we change.
It’s critical to somebody in here today.
I know because there are so many of us that have been abandoned by people who promised to stick with us while we changed a spouse that, that didn’t stick with you the whole time until you could make it through that particular issue or that concern in your life while you were working through that particular area of your life, that spouse left you or that best friend who said that she’d hang with you while you changed.
Maybe they’re nowhere to be found, maybe even a parent or a sibling that has kind of deserted you while you change.
I got good news for you tonight.
If that’s your story in the room, we serve a God who sticks with us while we change.
He doesn’t leave us, leave us to our own devices.
He by the spirit of God indwells us and walks with us and comforts us and empower us while we become more and more and more like Him.
The process is called sanctification. Say sanctification, sanctification is the process by which you are molded into the image of Christ Jesus.
And here’s the good news that will take a burden off your shoulders.
Second Thessalonians chapter one verse 13 says that it is the job of the Holy Spirit to sanctify you that it’s not your job to change yourself.
I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to change yourself or not, but it’s exhausting.
Change from the outside in is not only exhausting, it is also temporary change that lasts has to begin as the Holy Spirit works on the inside of you to cause you to become who God has called you to be apart from the empowering of the Holy Spirit.
Listen, you will not and I will not be able to be the wife that God has called us to be the mom that God has called us to be the grandmother, the single woman, the career woman, the ministry woman that God has called you to be.
You cannot do it apart from the indwelling Holy Spirit on the inside of you.
It is his work in us that causes us to change into the women.
God has called us to be sanctification.
It’s the process by which we look more and more like Jesus Christ, ultimate sanctification happens when we see him face to face.
That’s perfection. It doesn’t happen here on earth.
We will experience that when we have our glorified bodies and we see him face to face and spend eternity with him.
Right now. We are in the process of being progressively sanctified, progressively moving toward that shaping of ourselves into the image of Christ Jesus.
And listen, he will stick with you while you change. You’ve got, he’s got enough patience for that.
You can’t wear God out no matter what the journey ahead of you looks like.
No matter how much work you feel like needs to be done, no matter how many apologies you might need to make or formatting of your thinking, you might need to institute in the next 21, days.
No matter what it is that God is calling you to do.
See, I got that, y’all hear that.
I got that no matter what God is calling you to do, you need to know God’s got enough patience for that.
He will never leave you nor forsake you.
He if nobody else, he has got your back, he knows where you’re starting out when this conference is over.
He knows what the starting point of your journey and my journey is and he is ready to go on the journey with you.
He changes you from the inside out. Have you ever wondered how popcorn pops?
Somebody say yes I’m so glad you want to know.
So inside every kernel of corn, there is a microscopic dot of water.
So when you take a microwave bag of popcorn and you put it inside the microwave and the microwave starts heating up, it is actually not heating up the shells of the corn.
It is heating up the little microscopic dot of water that is on the inside of that kernel.
So as the the water heats up on the inside of the kernel, it creates steam and that steam presses and begins to press more and more as it grows in intensity, it presses against the shell of the corn until finally it pops open.
And all of a sudden you see something completely different on the outside that you never knew could be contained in something so small.
You never knew that all of that was in there, but it required you heating up what was on the inside to see that potential released on the outside.
The Holy Spirit of God lives on the inside of you.
My friend, the Holy Spirit is ready to work on the inside of you.
But the responsibility you and I have is to heat up the work of God’s Spirit on the inside of us.
We do that. Yes, by renewing our minds, by cooperating with him in the reading of the script and fellowship with other believers and being on our knees, in communion with the father.
We cooperate with his efforts. And as we do, we heat up the work of God’s spirit on the inside of us.
And as he heats up, he grows and grows in intensity in our life.
Until finally, one day we, we pop open and all of a sudden, we look completely different now than we ever did before.
People are looking at us and wondering how we got those ideas and how we can stand with so much peace and joy in the midst of so much trial.
And we look so different than we once did.
And then we can point them to a man that we know that is able to make change from the inside out, that is lasting and consistent and constant.
This is the process of sanctification where we heat up God’s work and he changes us from the inside out.
I remember um uh when I was pregnant with my first son, I, I was about eight months into the pregnancy and I will tell you that before I got to this particular point in my pregnancy.
Actually, in life, I never really was a girl that liked chocolate. I wasn’t a sweets person.
If I was gonna order dessert, I always ordered the fruit option like apple pie or peach cobbler.
That’s always what I wanted. I wasn’t a chocolate girl. I didn’t dislike it.
It just wasn’t my main thing until I was eight months pregnant.
I’ll never forget it because one day I woke up and wanted chocolate.
I have wanted chocolate every day since that first baby was in my belly.
Eight months, he is now 12.
Because when new life is growing on the inside of you, your tastes change all of a sudden you want things you never wanted before.
You have a taste for things. You never had a taste before. You have a distaste for things.
You never ever thought you’d have a distaste for. And it’s not because you tried to change your taste buds.
It’s just because the new life of God was growing on the inside of you.
And as he grew, what you desired changed and became in alignment with Jesus Christ. Sanctification.
Paul says that’s why you have proof that his patience is perfect.
Not only because you’ve been saved, that’s justification, but because you’ve been changed, that’s sanctification.
There’s just one more that I want to share with you tonight.
There are several here, but I want to share with you at least one more. Remember we’re backtracking.
So the next one is in verse 12.
He says, I thank Jesus Christ, our Lord who has strengthened me because he considered me faithful, putting me into service.
Paul says, he put me into service. Paul, the chief of all centers, the foremost.
He says, I can’t believe that he put me into service.
The proof of the perfect patience of God.
It’s not only seen in that he saved me, not only seen in that he changed me.
It’s seen in that he will use me for his glory.
I don’t know about you, but any time the Lord has ever used me in any capacity, I don’t just mean from a platform like this one.
This is a privilege uh to serve him in this way.
But you need to know that um the way God does most of his work is not from a platform.
It’s not when you have a microphone in your hand and you’re standing behind a podium.
It’s when you’re walking through the regular rhythms of your everyday living.
I’m talking about on your 8 to 5 job or as a stay at home mom, cooking dinner for your family as a single woman around your friends.
It is while you are in the rhythms of your life and God is using you right there in the rhythms of what your regular rhythms of everyday living and he is using you for his glory.
Any time I have seen God use me in any capacity for his glory.
I stand back completely in shock that he, that he would use me because y’all know he doesn’t need us, right that he could accomplish everything that he wants to accomplish apart from us.
He gives us the privilege of being his partners.
He gives us the honor of being in service with him to accomplish his goals here on planet Earth.
Paul writes it in complete disbelief that He cannot believe that God would use Him.
And he says the fact that God would use me is a reason why I know his patience must be perfect that He can take somebody like me and use me for his glory.
Do you know what it will be the attempt of the enemy to cause you?
And I, when we go back to what we do on a regular basis, your job or your home or whatever it is that you do, it will be the enemy’s goal to cause you to devalue the significance of where God has put you to be used for his glory.
He wants you to think that you should have the microphone in your hand or you should be standing in front of a group of people or that cooking that meal or that sharing that discipleship, meeting with that person, one on one that those things are not significant.
He will want you to think that you need to be doing something else or something more or something different to really be used by God.
But Paul wants you to realize that there is significance in the location where you have been placed That on that 8-5 job.
The one that you’re wondering, is there any eternal significance in where God has placed you?
You need to know that right there is exactly where God wants you to be his light in the midst of the darkness of your work environment and the enemy’s goal is to cause you and I to feel like where we are is no longer significant to the glory of God.
There was a young lady who was in my church.
Um Her name is Rashida Rain is about 35 years old, a fairly young woman.
She felt the Lord calling her to quit her job.
She had a good job, a successful job. She was doing well in her job.
She was on an upwardly mobile path, good benefits on this job.
But she just felt the Lord nudging her out of this particular position after a couple of years of praying about it, thinking through it, talking to people about it.
Um She, she felt sure that this is what God wanted.
It didn’t make sense, but she just assumed that he had something else for her, something better for her in his plan.
And so she obeyed, she quit that job and she spent some time doing what she loved taking care of Children while she waited on the next thing that God had for her.
And so she was a babysitter. That’s really how I knew Rashida.
I came to know her that way because my sister would often have Rashida to take care of her kids when she needed to babysit my cousin who lives down the street and has four girls about the same age as of our boys.
Um She would also use her as a babysitter.
So I would, I would often see Rashida when she was babysitting for some part of our family, some Children in our family.
And so we get to know each other every now and then.
And I sat down and I would talk with her and I will never forget Rashida telling me that a honestly, after about two years of babysitting, she loved it.
But after two years of babysitting, she said for so long, I gotta be honest with you.
I really began to feel cheated by God because I felt that he’d called me away from this, this job that I had.
That was a good job. I thought he was calling me to something else, something bigger, something better.
But here I am after all these years and I’m still babysitting. Nothing wrong with babysitting.
I just thought God had something else for me and yet still here I am.
She said, Priscilla, I, I’m I gotta be honest. I just feel like I, I got a little cheated.
You know, I wonder if there’s anybody in the room tonight and if the truth be told.
Yeah, you followed God.
But honestly, you feel a little bit cheated because the outcome of your life as you sit here in this room is not what you thought it would be.
You thought it would look completely different and go a different direction and end up at a different place.
And here you are wondering, Lord what in the world are you doing with my life? That’s what Rashida said.
She said, Priscilla, I started praying about this and being honest with God about it, I just told him God, I feel cheated.
I don’t know what you’re doing.
I don’t know why it’s taking so long for me to get to the next thing.
But Lord, I just, I just need help understanding what’s going on.
And she said, Priscilla, after I prayed that I’ll never forget the very next day, I was going to babysit at a friend’s house.
And when I walked up to the front door, I had a casserole in my hands that I had made for dinner that night for the girls.
She said the front door of this particular house had a window pane in it so that you could see kind of into the front room of the house.
And so when I walked up to the house and I rang the doorbell, I saw all these little girls and boys that I was gonna be babysitting, running to the door with a smile on their faces, excited that I was coming.
And she said, I, I don’t know how to describe what happened that night except to tell you that it’s almost like the Lord gave me his vision to see the whole night through his eyes.
So she said, those girls came running into the door, those little boys and girls, they came running to the door.
And all of a sudden it occurred to me that tonight I had an opportunity to inscribe the heart of God on the hearts of these little young men and women.
She said the door was opened and I walked in and, and I had this casserole in my arms.
And when I handed it over to the mom, I saw this look of appreciation and almost relief on her face that it was not just dinner for the night that it was a blessing, a seed being sown into the life of this mom.
She said them, the kids, they all sat down on the floor.
They were so eager because we always did a bible lesson.
When I came over, she said these little girls and boys started quoting back to me scriptures that I had taught them before.
And it occurred to me that these weren’t little girls and boys that these were basically men and women of God in the making.
And I had an opportunity to be a part of that.
She said I was just watching all of this unfold with the vision of God.
She said, then the parents decided they were going out on a date.
And when they left to go out on the date I saw with the vision that God was giving me that what I was doing was actually helping keep a marriage together.
And since this marriage was going to be kept together, this family was gonna be kept together and because this family was gonna be kept together, it was going to be fortified against the attempts of the enemy to derail the destiny of these Children.
She said, I saw all of that this, that night.
And as I left later on this evening, Rashida said to me, Priscilla, the Holy Spirit.
I sat down in the car on my way home that night, the Holy Spirit spoke to me so clearly it was almost like he was sitting in the next seat and this is what he said, Rashida, you have not been cheated.
You’ve been chosen that I have hand picked you for these years to be in these homes and around these Children and sowing into these lives and making an impact in these places that you have not been cheated.
That exactly where God has placed you is exactly where he intends you to be to use you for his glory.
About three months after I had that conversation with Rashida three months, she was driving the 1.5 hours between Dallas Texas and Waco Texas headed to meet a friend And nobody really knows what happened because she was all by herself.
But there was a collision on the freeway and in an instant, Rashida at 35 years old went home to see her lord.
And when I heard that news in the middle of the night, someone text me to tell me what was going on.
And when I heard that news, the first thing that occurred to me was that I was so glad that before she saw her savior face to face, she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt.
She had not been cheated, but that she had been chosen.
And tonight God wants us to leave knowing that we’ve been chosen as the band comes and plays.
I want you to think about these reasons that Paul has given for the perfect patience of God that He saved you.
You’ve been justified justification that He changes you. That is your sanctification and that He uses you.
He puts you in a specific location to be used for His glory.
And the location where you are is not by chance.
He has not forgotten you, you have not been cheated, you have been hand picked selected to be where you are and no matter where that is just know he’s got enough patience for that.
He will see you through it all the way to the end.
Lord Jesus, I pray for my sisters in Christ.
I pray for your hand of mercy upon them.
Lord, I pray that for anyone who has been tiptoeing in their relationship with you, they’ve been walking gingerly kind of unsure about whether or not they’re still in your good graces and you can still use them for your glory.
Lord, I pray that tonight you would give them a revelation of your mercy and a revelation of your patience.
Would you help them to know that you are for them that you still have their back?
That there is nothing that they have done that have put, that has put them outside of the reach of your mercy.
Lord, we thank you for your boundless patience. Help us to receive it and live in it. In Jesus name.
Amen.